And so it begins: Eat less meat or we’ll make you.

Mike d

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Personal freedoms are being curtailed ...in evidence everywhere .... it's usually a STIYA from me
 

lucylocket61

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Round here (I am surrounded by lamb and beef and dairy farms) the local cattle market on Monday was very gloomy, lots of talking about this and what is going to happen to farming in the area. Its not suitable for switching to arable land and will just revert to scrub if left.

The lack of common sense about this is alarming. As it the way all farming is being classed the same as US worst practices.
 
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JAT1

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If the reason for reducing consumption of meat is really about the animals farting methane, will not humans produce more methane this way if we eat more plants ?
 

lucylocket61

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Much is said about cattle eating soy. They dont. They are ruminants, as are sheep, so they cant digest it.
 

LittleGreyCat

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I<snip> PS I am NOT a heavy meat user. I am a user of meat and dairy products, and I also use vegetables.

Just another minor note.
The dairy industry relies on the beef industry to take all the male calves (and any surplus female calves) which result from keeping the milk cows regularly pregnant to keep the milk flowing.
So I think that having a dairy industry implies having a beef industry.
Unless you destroy all the newborn calves which are surplus to requirements, much as they do with male chicks from the poultry industry.

As for sheep - I have given up so much to control my diabetes, but....Wensleydale?
{Reaches for pitchfork and burning torch} :bigtears:
 

LittleGreyCat

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Trying to find low carb meals when eating out.

Oldvatr

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If the reason for reducing consumption of meat is really about the animals farting methane, will not humans produce more methane this way if we eat more plants ?
You are close when you say more plants. It is simple biochemistry that carbohydrates (or hydrocarbons as it were) decay to give off either CO2 if there is oxygen around to combine with, or methane in anaerobic conditions. This is a fact of life and death. Cows do not manufacture methane, they convert food into methane just as effectively as your local landfill would do with it. Matter is not being miraculously created by the cows. Each plant when born will give off a certain amount of GHG when it dies, and in the case of trees also when they are mature. So stop planting crops if you want to reduce GHG. Either that or stop burning fossil fuels which was natures way of capturing carbon in the early days where the atmosphere was methane heavy from volcanic activity. That is what coal and oil and natural gas came from. Plant matter that died millions of years ago. So what we need to do is find a mechanism like photosynthesis and burial that can lock the GHG we burn off, and create new fossil fuels. Cows are just a temporary sideshow along the way but their dung and trampling actions help to bury plant matter in the soil to replenish it. A field of cow pasture sequesters more GHG than a field of corn or wheat.

The difference that cows bring to the food table is that they are able to digest cellulose, to create milk and proteins. This is a trick they can do, and we cannot. So we are able to use grass as food as an indirect consequence. Otherwise grass looks green (or brown) but is of no other use to us except as a potential fire hazard. Whatever GHG grass captures in life gets given back when dead, so net zero contribution to the equation if cows go extinct.
 
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lucylocket61

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The production of rose veal is increasing round here. Maybe that will be the destination of unwanted male calves.
 

KennyA

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I agree.
However, the cattle that graze here in my province eat the grass where nothing else grows. Not beans, vegetables or even trees.
I fail to see how trucking vegetables from other regions is better for the environment.
We have to eat. Soy beans and avocados with all the fertilizer and water they use for growing and fuel for transportation are not better in preventing climate change. The science is flawed.
Where's the fertilizer going to come from if there are no farm animals?
 
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Oldvatr

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Where's the fertilizer going to come from if there are no farm animals?
Fossil fuels, other sources of amonia, potash mines, guano deposits. municipal food recycling sites. politicians promises? cess pit emptying as we do now? Plenty of it around, Industrially via Haber -Bosch process but also by adopting crop rotation using nitrogen rich plant material such as clover, borage, or rape.
 

Resurgam

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To alter scrub to productive farmland the first thing to do - after checking for big whatsits with teeth and claws, is to introduce goats. To improve grassland to a state where growing grain is a good idea, put sheep on it and begin ploughing small areas then let things grow naturally and allow the sheep to eat them - otherwise there will be problems with weeds.
Reducing the interactions between animals and the land reduces the fertility of the soil and in many places where local people and their animals have been removed 'so the area can regenerate' has resulted in it reverting to the desert which was there before the people came along.
 

KennyA

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Fossil fuels, other sources of amonia, potash mines, guano deposits. municipal food recycling sites. politicians promises? cess pit emptying as we do now? Plenty of it around, Industrially via Haber -Bosch process but also by adopting crop rotation using nitrogen rich plant material such as clover, borage, or rape.
Most of which would require a fair bit of energy extracting, processing and transporting it. With no spin-off benefits of meat, wool, dairy, leather etc. The low-tech sustainable option seems to me to use animals rather as we have always been doing up to this point.
 
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Oldvatr

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Much is said about cattle eating soy. They dont. They are ruminants, as are sheep, so they cant digest it.
What they do eat in their animal feed is Soy husks for the fibre. Normally these husks are discarded into landfill or burnt because they are an unwanted bi-product of human food production such as TVP and Tofu and Tempeh etc. The cows do mankind a service here, expecially the ones in the fields next to the Beyond Meat factories.
 

Resurgam

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I always thought that the way forward in everyday transport was alcohol based fuels, as they can be made anywhere, use technology similar to the engines already in use, and there are tons of raw materials around which it would be advantageous to use for something which would benefit the planet.
The electric car is expensive in many ways - not just to buy, and to treat the pedestrians mown down by the almost silent vehicles which have startled me in supermarket car parks. Making and disposing of the batteries will be problematic, sooner or later.
An alcohol based fuel would be ideal for small runabouts and motor cycles, even assisted bicycles - there were tiny motors which could be added to ordinary bicycles - anyone remember them? Growing crops for fuel, and grazing animals on the aftermath would be really sensible, particularly as temperatures in winter mean that things don't stop growing like they used to do, nor are they covered in snow.
 

Oldvatr

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I always thought that the way forward in everyday transport was alcohol based fuels, as they can be made anywhere, use technology similar to the engines already in use, and there are tons of raw materials around which it would be advantageous to use for something which would benefit the planet.
The electric car is expensive in many ways - not just to buy, and to treat the pedestrians mown down by the almost silent vehicles which have startled me in supermarket car parks. Making and disposing of the batteries will be problematic, sooner or later.
An alcohol based fuel would be ideal for small runabouts and motor cycles, even assisted bicycles - there were tiny motors which could be added to ordinary bicycles - anyone remember them? Growing crops for fuel, and grazing animals on the aftermath would be really sensible, particularly as temperatures in winter mean that things don't stop growing like they used to do, nor are they covered in snow.
How do you stop the populace drinking their cars dry? Actually, Brazil is leading the way with ethanol producing crops as a government initiative, but the Amazon rainforest is suffering as a consequence. Officially according to environmentalists it is due to cow pasture and soya for feeding cows on but that is bunkum in Brazil. As said, cows die from eating soya, and most of the logging slash and burn is for biomass. Also for palm oil which is so essential in cosmetics. These two never get mentioned now do they?

If you look at the proposals for the UK announced this year, a lot of the land currently used for livestock is to be reassigned to biomass. not food. This means trees shrubs and things that burn nicely in powerstations, I see Drax has been converted to biomass and now produces some 10% of what it did when it was coal fired. Thats progress. Produces the same amount of CO2 though but less sulphur.
 
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Resurgam

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Well I'd just add in a really violent emetic - but I always have had a quirky sense of humour.
Sensible use of marginal land, particularly as the temperatures rise could make all the difference - burning is not an efficient way of using crops - all the biomass movement seems entirely off to me.
One crop which would be really useful is cannabis - far more useful than many more popular plants - the seeds are really good food for fish and poultry, and for wildlife, and the entire plant can be used constructively whilst the soil is usually improved by the crop even though it requires little in the way of pesticides or fertilizer.